WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: When scooter and pogo stick combine, JumpX is born. Looks super-safe.
Archive for 2013
March 7, 2013
PUBLIC HEALTH: Deadly Bacteria That Resist Strongest Drugs Are Spreading.
Deadly infections with bacteria that resist even the strongest antibiotics are on the rise in hospitals in the United States, and there is only a “limited window of opportunity” to halt their spread, health officials warned Tuesday.
The bacteria, normally found in the gut, have acquired a lethal trait: they are unscathed by antibiotics, including carbapenems, a group of drugs that are generally considered a last resort. When these resistant germs invade parts of the body where they do not belong, like the bloodstream, lungs or urinary tract, the illness may be untreatable. The death rate from bloodstream infections can reach 50 percent.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the organisms “nightmare bacteria” during a telephone news conference, and noted that they could pass their trait for drug resistance — encoded in a scrap of genetic material called a plasmid — along to other bacteria.
I’d like to see the Public Health community work on this sort of, you know, actual public health matter instead of focusing on trendy political subjects like guns and soda.
COMPARISON: 15 Fitness Gadgets vs. One Personal Trainer.
AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Health & Personal Care.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Poor Scholars Hit by Money Squeeze From Wealthy Colleges.
Scholarship programs funded by some of the nation’s biggest donors including Gates, Coca-Cola Co. and Michael Dell, are taking aim at practices used by wealthy colleges, such as Boston College, which has a $1.65 billion dollar endowment, Amherst, with a $1.64 billion fund and Barnard, with $216.4 million. They say the schools hurt poor and minority students by rescinding aid once they find out they have awards from outside sources or by banning use of the funds to cover some student contributions. Donors complain that, in some cases, their gifts are boosting a school’s bottom line rather than the students they seek to help.
In most schools, “financial aid” is just a scheme to facilitate price discrimination. If any other industry behaved this way, it would be roundly condemned.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN SURPRISINGLY ROOMY: Cops: Perp Had Loaded Revolver In Her Vagina.
TECHNOLOGY: Self-Healing Concrete Uses Sunlight to Fix Its Own Cracks. “Even the tiniest cracks on the surfaces of concrete structures can lead to big problems if they aren’t immediately repaired. Now researchers have demonstrated a sunlight-induced, self-healing protective coating designed to fix cracks on the surface of concrete structures before they grow into larger ones that compromise structural integrity.”
SELF-BECLOWNING: Southern Poverty Law Center Finds Fewer Militias, Hypes Militia Threat Anyway.
Since their earlier screed calling “pickup artists” a “hate group,” it’s been even harder to take them seriously than it was before. (Lumping men who don’t call the next day in with Klansmen?) This latest doesn’t help, though.
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Michael Rank: History’s Worst Dictators: A Short Guide to the Most Brutal Rulers, From Emperor Nero to Ivan the Terrible.
WE USED TO HEAR ABOUT HOW IN THE 1950S PEOPLE SAW COMMUNISTS UNDER EVERY BED. NOW: Police Suggest College’s KKK Robe Sighting May Have Really Been a Woman in a Blanket.
WHAT FRACKING MEANS for Southeast Asia.
IN THE MAIL: Dictionary of Academia.
#ONYOUROWN: One-cop Georgia town considers making gun ownership mandatory. “Nelson, Ga., might require homeowners to have a gun. The idea that people should be ready to protect themselves while waiting for police to come is percolating in gun-rights circles.” When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
SENIOR SELL-OFF: Aging Baby Boomers And The Next Housing Crisis.
This problem will be made worse by the financial and demographic consequences of the higher education bubble, as the post-college people who should be buying houses can’t afford them, or don’t need them because they can’t afford to have kids.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Blue Civil War: The Battle for California.
The most important political battle in America today isn’t the the much-ballyhooed battle for the soul of the GOP. It is the blue civil war, pitting key elements of the Democratic coalition against one another as the old social model fails and the growth curve of rising blue model costs runs up against fiscal limits. Blue model policies, whatever their merits, don’t generate the revenue that can support blue model institutions and methods, and when those shortfalls appear, the coalition divides. It’s happened in Wisconsin, it’s happened in Indiana; it’s happened in Michigan and it is happening in California.
The Battle of San Diego is now in full swing. Last summer, voters there approved Prop. B, a ballot measure to reform a pension system whose cost had quintupled in 12 years, eating up revenue for other activities. As politicians struggled to pay off the pension obligations, libraries closed their doors and roads deteriorated. Voters had enough. No longer would they accept service cuts (or tax hikes) to pay to keep unionized public employees in the lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed.
The unions are striking back. A few weeks ago, the Public Employment Relations Board, a quasi-judicial administrative agency for public employees, ruled that “the city failed to negotiate in good faith with its public employee unions before Proposition B was placed on the ballot,” as a local news station reported. In other words, unions believe they should have veto power over which options are put before the voters.
Of course they do.
UNDERSTANDING: What Liberals Need to Understand About ‘Gun Guys.’
RAND PAUL STOPPED TALKING LAST NIGHT, BUT: McConnell extends Rand Paul filibuster: It’ll take 60 votes to proceed with Brennan nomination.
Related: This. Is. CNN. “Even before former NBC head Jeff Zucker has implemented most of long-term strategy to transform this moribund opinion network, its transformation into MSNBC appears to be near complete.”
UPDATE: AP Video Edits Out Standing Ovation At End Of Paul’s Filibuster.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie: Three Takeaways From Rand Paul’s Filibuster. Here’s one: “The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn’t a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion – why won’t the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? – transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: The Administration’s Thin Complaints About the Sequester: Why do their claims keep falling apart under scrutiny? “From this I infer that the administration is having a hard time finding concrete examples of bad things that the sequester is going to do. Nor is that a huge surprise. Whether you’re for or against the sequester, we are talking about relatively small sums, in the scope of the federal deficit. They’re simply not going to show up in much measurable way as devastating hardship.”
THE ROBBER BARONS: Neither Robbers Nor Barons.
One of the most prevalent myths about economic freedom is that it inevitably leads to monopolies. Ask people why they believe that, and the odds are high that they will point to the “trusts” of the late 19th century that gained large market shares in their particular industries. These trusts are Exhibit A for most people who hold this view. Ask them for specific names of the villains who ran these trusts, and they are likely to point to such people as Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. They even have a label for Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and others: robber barons.
But a careful reading of the economic research on the “robber barons” leads to a diametrically opposite conclusion: the so-called robber barons were neither robbers nor barons. They didn’t rob. Instead, they got their money the old-fashioned way: they earned it. Nor were they barons. The word “baron” is a title of nobility, one typically granted by a king or established by force. But Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and many of the others referred to as robber barons started their businesses from scratch and were granted no special privileges. Moreover, not only did they earn their money and not only were they not granted privileges, but they also helped consumers and, in one famous case, destroyed a monopoly.
Yes, but that doesn’t support a narrative of increased power for the political class.
JAIME DAREMBLUM: The Death Of A Despot: How can anyone still defend Hugo Chávez? “In a different era, he might have been called a fascist.”
I DON’T THINK PEOPLE ARE JUST WHISPERING THIS: Whisper campaign: Jeb is old news.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How the Student Loan Crisis Drags Down Home Prices.
For the average homeowner, the worst news is that these overleveraged and defaulting young borrowers are no longer qualify for other kinds of loans — particularly home loans. In 2005, nearly nine percent of 25- to 30-year-olds with student debt were granted a mortgage. By late last year, that percentage, as an annual rate, was down to just above four percent.
For the average homeowner, the worst news is that these overleveraged and defaulting young borrowers are no longer qualify for other kinds of loans — particularly home loans. In 2005, nearly nine percent of 25- to 30-year-olds with student debt were granted a mortgage. By late last year, that percentage, as an annual rate, was down to just above four percent.
The most precipitous drop was among those who owe $100,000 or more. New mortgages among these more deeply indebted borrowers have declined 10 percentage points, from above 16 percent in 2005 to a little more than 6 percent today.
“These are the people you’d expect to buy big houses,” said student loan expert Heather Jarvis. “They owe a lot because they have a lot of education. They have been through professional and graduate schools, but their payments are so significant, they have trouble getting a mortgage. They have mortgage-sized loans already.”
Where have I heard this before?